My daughter chooses to lead a minimalistic lifestyle, making gift-giving challenging for her parents. Last year she "adopted" a foster child, asking us to provide Christmas gifts to this little boy, rather than to receive anything for herself. This year I heard about ANM (Advancing Native Missions) and knew it was a perfect fit for our girl. By telling you about ANM, they gifted two goats and 12 chickens ($116 value) to a needy community on our daughter's behalf. She was so very excited when I told her about today's blogging opportunity!  More important than my girl ..read more

At this hour nine years ago, I was unresponsive and had just been rushed to the hospital via ambulance. As my family tearfully gathered and started absorbing the news, doctors confirmed that I was still alive, but questioned if I could even survive until the next morning. My husband and 11-year-old clung to one another. Our eight-year-old understood that something serious had happened to her Mom, but failed to grasp the gravity, knowing hospitals help people, so surely everything would be fine in a few days. Our five-year-old was upset that nobody would let him see Mommy. Six hours in, afte ..read more

I made Mimi's Cafe Corn Chowder for my daughter tonight. The recipe says prep time is "10 minutes". That step took me over 70 minutes. The cognitive effort of following a recipe, getting proper execution of all the right steps, in the correct order, is still really overwhelming for my brain, exhausting for my body. I'm exhausted. The kitchen looks like a tornado hit it. My feet are sore and swollen from standing for over an hour. I snapped at my sweet hubby in the process. And clean up is likely to take me a good couple of hours.  (ETA Our sweet 14-year-old has jumped in to clean t ..read more

Time moves crazily during quarantine! I planned to post a week ago and did not even realize a second week had gone by. Sorry about that. I've quietly celebrated another physical birthday with my family since last post. My "public birthday" is October 25, my stroke anniversary, my re-birthday, the day my life experienced a hard reset and I had to begin relearning how to breath, swallow, move my body, sit up, walk, talk, see, hear, and think.  Several newly wired parts of my brain will begin turning "nine years old" this fall. This shell of my physical body just turned 48 several days ..read more

Before my strokes, I was a published author. Hannah's Hope by Jennifer Saake was written before this brain damage. (Amazon link and audio CD) I have been struggling to write my next book since strokes (coming up on 9 years, this fall).  Thanks to the talents of my sweet new next-door neighbor Carolyn Howell, I am thrilled to announce that we are actually writing our next book! We anticipate being ready to shop for a publisher by end of first quarter, next year (2021). Please come join us on our new page at Masquerade: Deception Unmasked by Carolyn Howell, Jenni ..read more

Yesterday I saw my new Neuro-Opthalmologist (brain doctor who specializes in vision issues). It was only a 2 1/2 hour appointment. "Only" is literal. My shortest ever neur-op appointment before this was 3 1/2 hours. My longest was 9 hours. Typically these appointments have run in the 5-6 hour range. In Reno I saw my Neuo-Opthalmologist at least yearly, over recent years. Right after strokes it was every 6 weeks, then I got to 3 months, 4 months, 6 months, then finally we got to yearly. I expected to continue being followed by neuro-op for life. Yesterday's new doctor seemed rather befudd ..read more

Of the past 14 months, I have spent all but about 7 weeks in Arizona. (And of the 4 months prior to last May, had made 3 trips, totaling about 3 1/2 weeks, down here.) So it is fair to say that my daughter and I have spent the majority of the past year and a half here now, though we didn't make the final and official move until mid September of last year. (The family had to move in stages, due to school and work, but we were finally all five back together by the evening of my husband's 50th birthday in November.)  With that being said, this post will be my final regular mention of our 17 ..read more

In 2018, I moved blog homes. In 2019, I moved physical homes (and states), relocating from northern Nevada to the Phoenix area of Arizona. In 2020, it seems the whole world is standing still with this pandemic scare. My husband is working from home, along with much of the American non-emergency work force. My children are doing online schooling, along with the entire county. Travel is restricted and non-critical medical care is canceled. And (not virus-related), my beautiful new blog has been dead in the water for several months now. So I am back here posting on my Stroke Of Grace home ..read more